Island of Lost Girls

by Jennifer McMahon

  Rhonda thought of all those luridly painted boulders at the bottom of the lake, each carrying the weight of a whole year, the numbers sprayed across them. 1982, the year she was born. Below it, 1978, the year her father married Aggie. On top of them all was this year, 1993, the year of Peter Pan. A pile of years sunk in the sand and muck, covered with algae, a playground for fish and snapping turtles.

  THE FIREWORKS SEEMED to end only minutes after they began. Toward the end (which Rhonda thought must be the middle), she took her eyes off the sky and turned to her left to see Peter and Tock kissing, their faces flashing green, blue, and red. Then she turned to her right, to see Lizzy counting the silver dollars from her little treasure bag and humming to herself, not even looking at the fireworks, which, by the time Rhonda looked back up, were over. It was hard to make out in the dark, but it seemed like Lizzy had more coins than last time, and she’d stacked them into two piles.

  “What are you singing?” Rhonda asked.

  Lizzy raised her voice and sang so Rhonda could hear: “I’m too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt, so sexy it hurts…”

  Rhonda looked at her friend in her piss-scented rumpled pirate clothes. “Right,” she said. Peter and Tock were already on their bikes.

  “Are you guys coming, or what?” Peter asked.

  They rode home in a pack, Tock making the turn to the trailer, saying “Tick tock!” back to them when they called out their good-nights. Lizzy pulled ahead, racing down the street, her pirate shirt billowing out behind her. She kept singing about how sexy she was, in her Captain Hook voice, laughing between verses. Soon, she was so far ahead of them that all they could see was a speck of white, like the tail of a deer, then nothing.

  Rhonda was supposed to spend the night at Lizzy’s and now she was dreading it. Who really wanted to spend the night with a smelly old pirate captain?

  Peter and Rhonda took their time riding home from Nickel Lake. When they pulled into his driveway, Lizzy’s bike was there, resting against the garage. The lights in the house were all off, which meant everyone was still in Rhonda’s backyard, their parents no doubt fully plastered by then.

  “I have something to show you,” Peter said, heading toward the garage.

  “I bet,” said Rhonda and stayed put. How pitiful did he think she was? He came back and took her hand, pulling her to the old garage Daniel used as his workshop—the one Peter had nearly jumped from in the homemade wings just days ago. His grip was firm and Rhonda had no choice but to follow.

  Peter dragged Rhonda into the dark workshop and led her to the row of coffins in the back.

  “We’re not supposed to be in here when your dad isn’t,” Rhonda said. “If he catches us…”

  “See this one,” Peter said, pointing to one of the coffins.

  “Check out the lid.”

  Rhonda bent down and focused on making out the carved letters in the dark. Initials: DLS. And an inscription: IT’S BETTER TO BURN OUT THAN TO FADE AWAY…

  “Who’s it for?” Rhonda asked.

  “My father. He built his own coffin.”

  Rhonda shivered. “Creepy.”

  “Yeah, but you know the creepiest part?”

  Rhonda was about to ask what the creepiest part was when Peter put a finger to his lips and hissed, “Shhh!”

  Outside, they heard arguing. Two voices getting closer. Daniel and Clem.

  Peter lifted the lid of one of the coffins.

  “Get in,” he ordered.

  Rhonda shook her head. No way was she getting in there.

  “You really want him to find us in here?” Peter whispered. “Now get in. It’ll be fine. Trust me.”

  Trust me. How many times had he said those words to her? And how was she supposed to go on trusting him now? He’d kissed her, said she was his girl, then chosen Tock.

  Rhonda remained silent and crawled into the coffin and lay down, arms at her sides, ever obedient. Peter set the lid down gently. Rhonda lay in the darkness, smelling pine, listening to Peter climb into the coffin beside her—Daniel’s coffin. They were quiet for a while, lying there in the dark, playing at death.

  She listened as Clem and Daniel argued outside the door then came into the workshop. The light went on and spilled through the crack around her coffin lid.

  “For Christ’s sakes, Daniel, it’s a lot of money!” Rhonda heard her father say.

  “But you’ll get it all back tenfold. It’s an investment. The coffins are gonna take off, I’m telling you,” Daniel was explaining.

  “Like the peanuts?” Clem asked.

  “Fuck the peanuts!” Daniel replied. “This is bigger than that. This is the real thing.”

  Rhonda remembered the peanuts. The year before, Daniel decided to buy a peanut cart. At a buck a bag, he was going to get rich off tourists in Burlington, where vendors already sold chocolates, tacos, and jewelry (but, as yet, no peanuts) from carts. He ordered cases of peanuts, but the cart deal fell through. The peanuts sat in the garage for months, growing rancid, being invaded by mice, until Daniel finally loaded them into his pickup and took them to the town dump.

  “I don’t get it,” Clem said. “You have all the tools you need. You’re doing fine with what you have.”

  “But I’m talking production, Clem. I need better tools to up production, increase the profit margin.”

  Clem was silent for a moment, and then, flatly:

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Well what the fuck do you believe?”

  “I believe you need the money to pay Shane or Gordon or someone else you owe it to.”

  “Fuck you!” Daniel said. “You don’t have the slightest fucking idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I won’t give you the money unless I know what it’s for.”

  “A better table saw, a band saw, a drill press…I already told you. I showed you the fucking brochures!”

  “How much trouble are you in, Daniel? Is it really ten thousand? More? Less?”

  “You know what? Forget it. I don’t need your fucking help! Just consider yourself no longer a financial partner in Shale Coffins. When the money starts rolling in you get shit, my friend.”

  “Daniel, look at yourself. You keep digging yourself into these holes. The gambling. The half-assed business plans. Aggie’s worried. She says she’s afraid one day you’re gonna get in so deep there won’t be any way to pull you back out.”

  “Aggie’s worried, huh? Isn’t that sweet? Isn’t it great that she can come to you with this shit? You’re such a fuck of a good guy, aren’t you?” There was silence for a few seconds and then a sudden smacking sound—Rhonda knew Daniel was slapping the work bench with his open palm, a classic Daniel-in-a-rage move.

  “Aren’t you?” Daniel’s voice was raised now, angry. “You stay away from my wife! Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on!”

  “I won’t talk to you when you’re like this,” Clem’s voice was calm, patient, low.

  “Stay the fuck away from her!”

  “Good night, Daniel. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  There was the sound of metal hitting the concrete floor of the shed. Daniel had thrown something, some tool.

  “Get the fuck off my property!” he shouted after Clem, his voice flaming with rage, the echo of metal hitting concrete still in the air.

  The light went out and the door to the garage slammed. Rhonda lay still, breathing pine. Peter got out of his coffin and pulled the lid off of Rhonda’s.

  “You okay?” he asked, giving her a hand and pulling her up.

  Rhonda nodded. “You?” she asked.

  Peter didn’t answer. He just led her out of the workshop in silence. She never got to ask what the creepiest part of Daniel building his own coffin was.

  JUNE 16, 2006

  HAD LIZZY REALLY come back? Was it possible? Why would Peter keep something like that a secret? And the dark-haired little girl at the motel…it couldn’t be Ernie, could it?

  Every qu
estion Rhonda asked led to new questions, and she felt she was spinning her wheels in sand.

  Maybe, Rhonda thought, she’d been focusing on the disappearance of the wrong girl. Somehow or other, Lizzy was tied into it, and in order to understand what happened to Ernie, maybe Rhonda needed to start with Lizzy.

  Safely ensconced in her apartment, Sadie on her lap and an open bottle of beer on the coffee table, Rhonda picked up the remote for the VCR and pressed PLAY.

  The camera scanned the crowd before the opening act. There were Clem and Justine. Laura Lee in her silver gown. Daniel next to her, dressed in jeans and a red T-shirt, no bags packed beside him, no bus ticket sticking out of his pocket. And there was Aggie, tumbler of gin in one hand, cigarette in the other. Everyone looked young and healthy and like they’d be around forever.

  Then Rhonda and the O’Shea boys were on the stage, tucked into their tiny beds, when outside the window, the audience heard a crow. There he was—Peter Pan lighting down on the window, crawling through like a cat burglar, a thief of children, a fairy king. He moved like water. He was that graceful. His body all elastic energy. Peter at fourteen. Rhonda leaned forward for a better look, wanting so badly to crawl into that scene, to be back on the stage, to remember what it was like.

  “Second star to the right, and straight on till morning,” she found herself mumbling. How many times had she caught herself mouthing these words as if it were some magic incantation?

  The pounding on the door made her jump. She pushed PAUSE, held Sadie in her arms, and went to see who it was.

  “I told you to stay away from my mother,” Tock stormed into the apartment, her gray eyes nearly black. “Who the fuck do you think you are? What the hell do you get out of harassing some sick old lady? What is it you think she’s going to tell you?”

  “Nothing…I…”

  “Do you seriously think she could have anything to do with what happened to Ernie?”

  Rhonda took a step back.

  “Do you?”

  “No, but she might know something…”

  “Know what? What might she know, Ronnie? The perfect sangria recipe?”

  “Sometimes,” Rhonda said, “people have clues that they don’t even know are clues.”

  “Oh, that’s very fucking profound. Here’s a clue that it’s time you picked up on: if you don’t stay the fuck away from my mother, I’ll have the cops arrest you for harassment. Everyone wants to give poor little Rhonda a pass because she’s so fragile, so innocent. I’m over it, Rhonda. You need to grow the fuck up and move the fuck on and take some fucking responsibility.”

  Rhonda squinted at Tock. What she saw in the other woman’s eyes wasn’t simply rage: it was fear. “You think she might know something, too, don’t you?”

  “Jesus, Rhonda!”

  “Maybe part of you wonders if Peter is involved. I mean, it’s clear he wasn’t hiking in the park that day, right? And if he lied to you about that…”

  “Peter doesn’t lie to me.”

  Rhonda thought of telling Tock about the girl in the motel, about finding Peter’s keys in the cemetery. But then Tock looked past Rhonda into the living room and saw the frozen image in the TV screen: Peter bending over Rhonda in her cot.

  “You are pathetic,” Tock said. “Stay away from my family.” She turned and left, slamming the door. Sadie jumped in Rhonda’s arms.

  “It’s okay, girl,” Rhonda cooed to the little white pig, her own voice shaking. “Everything’s just fine.”

  But that was a lie. In the past eleven days, Rhonda’s entire life had been turned upside down. She’d let a girl be kidnapped and come to question everything she thought she knew about Peter. Now Tock hated her, which probably meant she’d never see Peter again. She stared at the image of fourteen-year-old Peter on the screen.

  Second star to the right, she thought.

  But she couldn’t go back. She could only move forward.

  Rhonda sat back down on the couch, but didn’t press PLAY. She picked up the phone instead and dialed the number for the Find Ernie hotline. Warren picked up on the first ring.

  “It’s Rhonda,” she said. “I was hoping you could get out of there and meet me for a beer. I’m going a little crazy here.”

  “Sure,” Warren said. “Name the place.”

  Rhonda laughed. There was only one bar in town. “The Silver Dollar. It’s out on Route 6. Past the state forest.”

  “I know where it is.”

  “Good. Bring your cowboy hat and your singing voice—it’s karaoke night. Two-dollar drafts and an order of wings on the house if you buy a pitcher.”

  “Hot damn! I’m there!” he said.

  NOT LONG INTO their second pitcher, Rhonda told Warren about how she’d spent her entire life pining away after Peter.

  It was a relief to be honest about her feelings for once. To have someone to tell the whole story to. She thought that maybe, if she talked about it, if she got it all out, she’d be purged. And ready to move forward at last.

  Warren nodded, chewed his lip. “So you’re in love with him?” He looked away from her and down into his beer. Beer he wasn’t technically even old enough to be drinking, but like any resourceful college student, he carried a fake ID. Behind him, a string of Western lights with little plastic lassos, hats, and horses glowed against the rough wood paneled wall. They were shouting to hear each other over the noise of the other patrons and the guy on stage murdering an old Hank Williams song.

  Rhonda laughed, shook her head. “I’ve decided it’s not even really Peter I’m in love with. It’s the idea of Peter. But I’m not even sure what that means anymore. I think he might be involved, Warren.”

  “Involved?”

  “In taking Ernie. He was working on Laura Lee’s bug in the shop when Katy said the rabbit picked Ernie up from school. And I found his keys in the cemetery.”

  “What? When?”

  “That day you and I went. I hid them. I just couldn’t tell you then. I couldn’t believe Peter might have had anything to do with what happened to Ernie. It wasn’t the truth I was working so hard to find, but my own twisted little version of it. Just like it’s not the real Peter I’ve been in love with, but an eleven-year-old girl’s idea of a boy who’s half real boy, half Peter Pan.”

  “Have you shown anyone the keys? Peter? Crowley?”

  “No one. You’re the first person I’ve told. But there’s more. Carl, who works at Pat’s, saw Peter on the day of the kidnapping at a motel in town. I think he was with Lizzy…and that they may have had Ernie.”

  “His sister Lizzy? I thought you said she’d run away or been kidnapped or something when you were still kids?”

  Rhonda nodded. “I think she came back.”

  “But why would they take Ernie?”

  Rhonda blew out a frustrated breath.

  “I don’t know. None of it makes any sense. But there’s one way to find out. I’m ready for the real truth, this time. I’ll just tell him that if he doesn’t level with me, I’m going straight to Crowley with what I have.” She stood up, swaying, and reached to steady herself on the table, sending their glasses tottering.

  “Whoa there, cowgirl,” Warren stood up, placed a steadying arm around her. “I don’t think you’re in the shape to go confronting anyone. It’ll wait till morning. I’ll go with you. We’ll get to the bottom of it, I promise. In the meantime, I’m gonna take you home.”

  RHONDA WAS NOT a drinker, and the beer had made her feel brave and floaty and like she could do or say anything.

  “I should go,” Warren said. He was hovering in her doorway.

  “Why’s that?” Rhonda said.

  “Because you’re a little drunk.”

  “Actually, I’m a lot drunk. But I know what I’m doing. I want you to come in.” She held out her hand. He took it, and she pulled him into the hall and kissed him. She staggered backward, taking him with her, the kiss uninterrupted. She hit the wall, her head landing beside her drawing of the evisce
rated rabbit. Warren pulled away.

  “I need to go,” he said, his voice a husky whisper, his eyes moving from her face to the dissected bunny beside her.

  “Stay, Warren. I really want you to stay.” She kissed him again.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to,” he said, pulling back. “You have no idea how much I want to. It’s just that…”

  “You’ve got a girlfriend, right?” It was Rhonda who pulled away now. “Waiting for you back in Pennsylvania?”

  “No,” Warren said. “That’s not it. I don’t have a girlfriend.”

  “Is it because of everything I told you about Peter? Because if that’s it…”

  “That’s not it.”

  “Let me guess,” Rhonda said, smiling, drawing him to her, her fingers hooked in the belt loops of his jeans. “You’re a monk and you’ve taken a vow of celibacy?”

  He shook his head, smiling as she pulled him down the hall toward her bedroom.

  “Is it our age difference? Am I like an old lady to you?”

  “Definitely not,” he said.

  “Remember what you told me…how everything happens for a reason? Maybe this is it. Maybe this is part of why I was there in that parking lot when Ernie was taken. So I would meet you.”

  “Rhonda, it was—” She put a finger on his lips.

  “Shhh.”

  Warren looked slightly worried.

  “What do you feel right now?” she asked him.

  “Too much,” he said.

  “Good,” she told him. “That’s just perfect.”

  She started to unbutton his shirt. Then she switched over to her own. Only when they were naked on the bed, kissing, did she tell him the truth.

  “I’ve never done this before,” she whispered.

  Warren pulled away. She guided him back on top of her.

  “I want you to be the first,” she said.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  She was sure.

  WHILE WARREN SLEPT naked beside her, Rhonda dreamed of the rabbit. In the dream, she was a child again, chasing the giant white Easter Bunny through the seemingly endless woods behind her house. Brambles scraped at her face. She twisted her ankles on roots and loose stones. The rabbit ran ahead of her, stopped and waited until she’d nearly caught up with him, then bolted off through the trees. Soon, she was lost—unsure of the landscape around her. Then she looked up just in time to see the rabbit jump down into a hole, and eagerly, without fear, she followed.